William Adam counts the schools of Bengal

Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 and the resolution of 7 March that followed it put Company funds behind English; that story is told under Bentinck's reforms. Earlier that year Bentinck had appointed William Adam, a Scottish former Baptist missionary and friend of Rammohun Roy, to report on the schools that Bengal and Bihar already had. Adam wrote three reports, dated 1 July 1835, 23 December 1835 and 28 April 1838. The second is a close study of one police division, Natore in Rajshahi: 27 elementary schools with 262 pupils, and 37 schools of Hindu learning with 397 students.

His reports are the best early picture of schooling outside the Company's colleges. Pathshala teachers, paid little by parents and patrons, taught reading, writing and accounts in Bengali. Girls had no schools of their own. In five districts he surveyed, teachers came from castes well below the Brahmins, including Chandals. Adam proposed improving these schools with vernacular textbooks and inspection. Auckland's government did not take it up, and the General Committee of Public Instruction judged the plan "almost impracticable".

Adam's 100,000 is an estimate from a rough count of villages, and he warned against it himself. He recorded that elementary teaching in Rajshahi was "on the decline", which is local testimony and not a measure for all of Bengal. Later writers have drawn opposite conclusions from the same pages.